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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28771044">The Morning after Woe</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch'>middlemarch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mercy Street (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Family, Letters, Marriage, Outtakes, Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:06:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>771</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28771044</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry could still see quite clearly what he most needed to.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alice Green &amp; Emma Green (Mercy Street), Emma Green &amp; Mary Phinney, Emma Green/Henry Hopkins, Jedediah "Jed" Foster/Mary Phinney</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Morning after Woe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384296">A Mansion House Murder</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/pseuds/BroadwayBaggins">BroadwayBaggins</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/pseuds/Fericita">Fericita</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray">MercuryGray</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch">middlemarch</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow">sagiow</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells">tortoiseshells</a>.
        </li>

    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Here you go,” Henry said, setting down the steaming cup of tea. It was chamomile and she could smell the clover honey he’d added, though he’d left the spoon in the kitchen. “This should do the trick.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” Emma asked. She placed the pen in the inkwell and let her hand rest within reach of the cup’s delicate handle but she didn’t pick it up. Not yet. Henry was standing in the late afternoon sunlight, still formally dressed in his black frock coat and cravat from his morning of calls. The darn on the right elbow had held, as Mary had said it would, the stitches nearly unnoticeable except that Emma had labored over them until she’d had a crick in her neck. </p>
<p>“You are writing to your sister and are in desperate need of something soothing. This tisane is your favorite and perfectly safe,” Henry explained, glancing at the curve of her belly. The alterations to her bodice were more comfortable but hardly concealed what she had referred to in the letter to her mother as her “most joyful expectations.” </p>
<p>“But how do you know that?” she replied, now picking up the tea and sipping it. Appreciating the loveliness of the pale green china as much as the sweetness of the honey and the freshness of the herb. The tea cups had been too dear but Mary had noticed how Emma’s gaze had lingered over it on their shopping expedition and the entire set had arrived most carefully crated and packed in sawdust with the card in Dr. Foster’s copperplate. She’d written an exquisitely correct thank-you but had only felt satisfied once she’d served the older man a cup with a plate of tea-cakes she was certain Mary hadn’t the receipt for.</p>
<p>“You bite your lower lip when you write to Alice and you never keep her last letter beside you because the scent she sprays on it gives you a sick headache,” Henry said. “When you write to you mother, you get a little furrow just between your brows and you look out the window every quarter-hour; it takes you the whole afternoon to write the two pages. When you answer Mary Foster, you tap the end of your pen against your cheek and you always ask me to bring you back a particular book from the college library that we don’t have here before you begin, because there was a passage you wanted to share. You smile when you write to Belinda and you put a pressed flower in the center of the folded page.”</p>
<p>“My heavens, Henry! You’ve made quite a study of me!” Emma exclaimed. How she might feel shy when he was looking at her with such a tender regard, so easy in his recitation of her every movement and gesture, was itself a mystery but one that would dissipate like the steam from the cup if she said anything.</p>
<p>“What else should I understand better?” he asked, almost glib. Since they’d married and left Alexandria, she’d found that when Henry was not in the grip of acute suffering, he was capable of a most appealing, dry humor. He was also undeniably and adorably ticklish.</p>
<p>“You were struggling quite a bit with your sermon last week because you said Dr. Haywood would contest your interpretation of the Greek,” Emma said.</p>
<p>“Oh that,” Henry said, waving his hand in a delightful manner Emma could never have imagined during the War or even more recently, when they’d found each other again in Alexandria. “That is merely to be a minister to a congregation of academics.”</p>
<p>“You are saying cataloguing my letter-writing is more important than your vocation?”</p>
<p>“You ask as if I should find it difficult to answer,” Henry said. He walked over to her and crouched down as if he were in nothing but his shirtsleeves and the old trousers he wore for gardening. Just as easily, he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips for a kiss, looking at her all the while. “Of course, you are more important. And I shouldn’t want it repeated, but I must observe that the Quakers seem to manage perfectly well without a minister at all.”</p>
<p>“Henry!”</p>
<p>“It’s not heresy, Emma,” Henry laughed. “Now finish off that letter, which Alice will hardly read, and then I can take you for a ride in the carriage in the fresh air and sunshine and tell you all about Mrs. Hewitt’s plans for the Sunday School scholars. It will either be a tremendous success or an abysmal failure and I can’t say which I’d prefer.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title from Emily Dickinson.</p>
<p>Another late addition to the round robin epilogue.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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